


Anything But Starbucks

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Coffee, F/M, Fluff, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The first time Q puts his hand out and finds a takeaway cup instead of his mug, he stares at it in such horror that he almost misses Bond getting shot at yet again.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anything But Starbucks

It begins with Starbucks, of all places.

The first time Q puts his hand out and finds a takeaway cup instead of his mug, he stares at it in such horror that he almost misses Bond getting shot at yet again.

“I thought you said this way was safe!”

“Safer,” Q corrects distantly, still staring at cardboard and plastic as if they were poisonous. “Who left this?” he asks of his team, carefully eliminating all swearing and screaming for later. They look scared nevertheless, and Q wonders if perhaps he has a slight Earl Grey problem.

Olive – superhero t-shirts and five languages – meekly offers from her place of relative safety from the back, “Moneypenny,” and then seems to try to hide behind her computer screen the moment his gaze turns to her. Despite the situation, he still gets a slight ‘Eye of Sauron’ feeling of smugness.

Vaguely he registers an explosion over the comms. “Everything all right over there?”

“Just peachy,” Bond snarls. Also, “I left the spare gun somewhere in there.”

Q allows himself a facepalm, if only at how petty trained killers can be.

“I will end you,” he assures Bond, before adding, “I’m leaving now.”

Explosions generally mean Bond is happy and taken care of for now, and Q has been meaning to let his team get a little more experience, if only because the idea that only Q can handle him is ridiculous and possibly true. But right now, he has to see a secretary about some coffee.

\----------

“Did you even try it?”

Q stands framed in the doorway, a vision of outraged indignation – or at least a slightly deflated one, given that Eve, as ever, has made the first move.

“Not the point.” He strides in, trying to maintain his visible fury, and places the cup in front of her (he’d slam it, but he knows that if he spills anything, he’s cleaning it up). “You know I hate coffee.”

“No,” she corrects him, apparently fascinated by her computer screen to the point where he barely merits a glance. “You hate cheap staff room coffee, and you’ve never bothered to try anything else.”

“So you naturally thought that a Starbucks was the solution.” 

She shrugs, effortless and elegant (not that Q notices these things), and finally looks up at him. “With the amount of caffeine you ingest, I thought you could use a little variety.”

Funny how she manages to deliver it like Q is the one being problematic here. “I have to defend our servers, constantly update our systems, design pioneering technology I’m not allowed to patent, and babysit any number of sociopaths at one time while we try to save the world. I am allowed to drink whatever I want.”

She smiles at him pityingly, and then turns back to her screen.

“I’ll get you Caffé Nero next time.”

Q will never ever admit to this, but it’s entirely possible that he growls at her. The notion is ridiculous, but should anybody accuse him, he’s more than willing to argue that it is totally and completely merited.

\----------

She follows up on that Nero threat, as well. Not straightaway, because for a week or two after hunting down his mug at the back of a filing cabinet – reminders about paperwork, what a charming girl – he hoards it like a dragon with its treasure, or – as he overhears when waiting for 004 to jump out of a helicopter (he’s working on a theory that the ‘two kills’ necessary for the position are in fact two times you yourself should have gotten yourself through bloody reckless stupidity) – like his mug of Earl Grey is the One Ring.

This does have the result that he actually sends himself home to sleep for the first time since taking this position. Even he draws the line at realising at 3am that he’s been softly cooing “my precious” to himself.

Unfortunately the only lesson truly learnt here is that sleep is for the weak and certainly not for those accidentally immersed in warfare with former field agents, because when he returns the next day his mug has vanished again, replaced by a steaming grande latte. Said latte is carried ceremoniously to the rooftop and thrown against a wall, because no. No, Eve does not get to dictate what he does and does not drink, the same way she doesn’t get to decide when he eats or when he sleeps. He is a grown man and he does not need to be mothered.

Q Branch goes silent the moment he walks in the door again, and he doesn’t care one bit.

\----------

It all evolves from there. At first it’s cycles through various cafés and varieties, but that soon starts bleeding into proper dark roasts in a thermos decorated – he allows himself a smile where he knows the cameras can’t see him – with the Q Scrabble tile.

When the latter appears, he starts drinking it, and not just because his mug is nowhere to be found. This isn’t teasing anymore, or casual mothering, or whatever the hell it is Eve’s up to. This takes effort. This takes so much more than just walking into a local café and handing over far too much money for a mediocre product. 

At first the taste is sharp and bitter; he only chokes it down because it’s been almost twenty hours already with nothing but Jez’s Haribo to run on. Over time, though, she clearly starts experimenting, because the taste deepens and grows complex, even as the smell grows to be something he looks forward to.

Bond’s eyebrows raise when he walks in to return a few twisted wires (this is taunting him, why bring anything back at all, why would anybody do this, Q wants to cry and he will not give Bond the satisfaction). “Earl Grey just for when you’re in your pyjamas?” he asks, and Q rolls his eyes, since James Bond apparently reduces him to acting like a six-year-old.

“Eve’s latest hobby.” There’s really no other way of putting it. It’s been more than a few weeks now, yet he’s still no closer to unravelling this. Initially he’d gone stomping up there every time to demand an explanation that wasn’t coming, or (on one occasion he’d like to forget) to beg the return of his mug. Now he still goes up there, but it’s more resigned, and actually slightly curious, to find out what exactly today’s concoction is. To be fair to her, they’re always different: Sumatran or Italian roasts, vanilla or chocolate or amaretto flavouring, sugared or left bitter, mixed into lattes or cappuchinos or left straight. She talks him through each one, and it’s oddly fascinating.

Recently – read: when nobody’s blowing themselves up and the alternative is budgeting (the time when Q used to doodle viruses or new tracking devices, he realises later) – he’s even started reading up on the stuff. There’s a whole separate history with coffee, and procrastinating nerd that he is, he’s read as much of it as people have seen fit to upload online. At least Eve turns out to know most of it as well, so the conversation is less awkward and more exclusive to them alone. His tea/coffee and lunch breaks are longer – than his original five minutes – and more regular than before, and he’s actually starting to look forward to them. The job is as interesting as ever; it’s just that Eve is interesting too. 

He repeats none of this to Bond, naturally. He’s fairly certain that office coffee discussions are somewhere below steady relationships on the list of ‘Things That Happen To Other People’ he imagines in Bond’s mind.

“Why?” Bond asks, quite reasonably (something must be wrong).

Q just sighs; takes a sip of a hazelnut macchiato. “I have no idea.”

\----------

Not that he doesn’t miss tea: he does, it is the drink of his life and his people and he loves it enough to drop it into conversations where he is supposed to be impressing resurrected field agents to soothe them about the changing world (or whatever Tanner had actually said, Q had been a little bit preoccupied at the time). On the occasions when he does find himself back in his flat, he takes renewed pleasure in visiting what his sister dubbed the Cupboard of Obsession. There’s a ritual to tea-making – albeit one he doesn’t have time for at work.

That said, it turns out there’s a ritual for brewing coffee as well – again, something eschewed by the necessities of their own facilities.

After two months, he does something ridiculous: he brews his favourite blend of Earl Grey, pours it into a thermos he’d bought in an air of idle speculation and almost immediately panicked over, and finds himself presenting it to Eve.

“Poison doesn’t seem your style,” she comments, eyeing it where it sits on her desk.

“This is rather the opposite.”

He’s not even ashamed that he hangs around to watch her take her first sip. If he were, perhaps he’d mind that she keeps her eyes on him the whole time.

“Not bad,” she allows.

“You aren’t human,” he declares, and resolves to pursue this until she cracks.

In between the saving the world and the babysitting and everything else, of course. Wouldn’t want to lose sight of one’s priorities.

\----------

Awfully, horribly, it takes Bond to point it out. James bloody Bond.

“So she introduced you to her favourite drink – ”

“By stealing my mug and complaining about my life choices.”

“ – and now you’re making her yours – ”

“It’s only fair.”

“ – and you haven’t had sex.”

Q looks at him. “Not every relationship in the world revolves around sex, 007, you do realise that?”

Bond doesn’t even bristle. Good Lord, you’d almost think he cares. “You think this is normal?”

“I think you’re not allowed to decide what ‘normal’ is.”

“You are?”

Which…is a good point. 

Q considers it all: breaking his habits, forcing him into conversation with somebody outside of his department, forcing him to talk about something other then work, creating an excuse for them to talk every day…

He discovers that he might actually consider Bond a friend these days, because rather than hiding the revelation away he lets his head fall to his desk with a groan.

“Why couldn’t she just _say_?”

Bond actually laughs at that. Q is doomed.

\----------

Eve just looks up at him, wide-eyed and innocent. Despite the fact that Q knows her to be pure evil incarnate, he’s almost taken in for a moment. She’s been working on that, he can tell: digging deep into the stereotypical secretary routine so that people forget that she can kill them with her mind – or at least with the gun under the desk. 

“I told you,” she says, “I thought you needed a bit of variety.”

“And that’s all.”

“That’s all.”

For the first time in a while, he asks, “Where’s my mug?”

“Why?”

Knowing he’s being childish and not caring, he ticks the strokes off on his fingers: “You hid it behind a stack of paperwork; in my house; in my _bed_ ; by the staff shower; next to a change of clothes. Wherever you’ve hidden it, it’s not a very subtle hint.”

She raises an eyebrow. Then, slowly, she leans back, opens a drawer – eyes still fixed on him – and produces the mug.

“You stopped asking,” she points out.

There are a thousand things he could say in this moment. He’s familiar with the concept: the great ending, the grand speeches, the witty repartee, the crude innuendoes. Even if romantic comedies didn’t exist, he has to listen to Bond seducing women far more often than any man should have to – in company, as well, sometimes taking bets on puns or whether Bond would remember to take the earpiece out – so he’s fairly familiar with the options.

Apparently he hesitates a bit too long, because Eve gets bored, and yet again takes matters into her own hands – be it drawing the boy genius out of his lair, seducing him with something new and fascinating until she’s fighting with his job for space and winning, or making a move when his brain is obviously slowed down by too much data.

She tastes of tea leaves and exactly timed steeping and thousands of years of perfection. He’s fairly certain he tastes of southern continents and enticing bitterness and rich roasts.

Next to them, on the desk, their drinks go cold.


End file.
